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The Romanian hacker who helped expose Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of private e-mail as secretary of state was sentenced Thursday to 52 months in prison in connection to an admission that he broke into about 100 Americans' e-mail accounts. The compromised accounts included celebrities, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and family members of former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, and Sidney Blumenthal, a political advisor whom Clinton corresponded with using her private e-mail account.

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Marcel Lehel Lazar, a 44-year-old cab driver known by the handle Guccifer, conducted his crimes at home and was extradited to the US this year. He pleaded guilty to identity theft and federal hacking charges.

Guccifer had claimed he hacked into Clinton's private e-mail server at her New York residence. But he has never been charged for that, and he has never divulged the contents of the alleged hack. However, the hacker did reveal private documents from other hacks, including self portraits painted by George W. Bush. He also leaked memos Blumenthal sent Clinton to her private e-mail account. This eventually exposed the fact that Clinton used that account as secretary of state for personal and private businesses instead of using her government account for official business.

Republicans, including GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, are invoking the e-mail brouhaha in the run up to the November 8 presidential election hoping to convince the public that Clinton is unfit to be president.

Guccifer's sentence was in line with what federal prosecutors were seeking. They said the penalty must "address any false perception that unauthorized access of a computer is ever justified or rationalized as the cost of living in a wired society—or even worse, a crime to be celebrated." When handing down the term, US District Judge James Cacheris of Virginia said, "this epidemic must stop."

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In seeking the harsh sentence, feds had referred to a new hacker individual or collective known as Guccifer 2.0 that is suspected of having ties to the Russian government and has been credited for hacking into the Democratic National Committee earlier this year. Guccifer 2.0 has also been credited for a separate breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Lazar, meanwhile, has said he had no formal computer training or expertise. Instead, he claims to have guessed people's passwords after reviewing Wikipedia entries about them.

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David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets